Oh boy. Where to begin with this one. Just when I thought things were ticking along unblogfully for once, I went and did something beyond madness today.
What.the.hell.was.I.thinking?
I’ve got no idea. Blogging this is a technique to distract me from the horror on my head right now*. I’m also hoping that a swarm of people will come forward saying “I DID THAT TOO!!!”
A year or so after we moved into our gaffe, a delivery man knocked on the door. I signed for the parcel while he looked wistfully at the house across the street.
“Ah, those were the days…,” he said, shaking his head. “Pussy Parlour. I used to deliver there every few weeks.”
Last night I met up with a group of friends for a bucket full of fizz, tasty nosh and a lot of fun. We all meet up a few times a year and have done for years now. They are a bunch of five very different, but each remarkable, women. We became friends as our kids were enrolled in the same academy for crazy little dudes pretty much from the get go.
Over the years, an awful lot of crap stuff has come and gone, often to do with our little dudes, but other stuff too. Real crap. These evenings are a space to vent, moan, rant but mostly laugh. And drink huge amounts of cava. I fell into bed in the early hours of this morning, chuckling and remembering the summer of 2006, when we surprised Clare.
Long, long week of grindingly vile news, including (in no particular order) Gaddafi coverage, Fox corruption, Dale Farm eviction and Ricky Gervais being a knob. But then I noticed this when I was sorting out my expenses;
How COOL is that? The ticket person hole punched a witch on a broomstick on my train ticket. I love it! I want to know if it’s a rogue operator, who sprinkles cheer among commuters across the year with custom punchers for different occasions, or whether Southeastern Rail have provided them. Either way, thank you for making me chuckle and adding a bit of humour to the every day. Lovely timing.
Had a trippet down memory lane yesterday when I checked into a shabby hotel in Canterbury for a work meeting. I’d wrongly thought that booking a room on laterooms.com, two hours before arrival, meant a fab room hugely discounted.
My job involves a fair amount of experiencing mid to low range UK hotel fare but, as usual, there is always room for fresh lows. “This hotel”, said one Tripadvisor reviewer, “made Fawlty Towers look like the Ritz”. “Do not stay here”, cautioned another.
Anyway, cooped up in my stuffy, second floor garrett, on my plank of wood, grubby bed, avoiding the bathroom shared with “a 60 year old man who shouldn’t be any trouble” (according to the man on reception), I was transported back to my experiences as a chambermaid in a local, shabby hotel on the seafront in Southend.
“Hi, return to the railway station, please.”
“That’s £2.90”….
….
“Hey Missus! Missus! Missus! At the back of the bus!”
“Wha? Me? Sorry?”
“You’ve got to get off the bus!”
“Sorry?”
“You’ve got to get off the bus. I forgot I don’t go to the railway station.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, I only go this far and then head back. But don’t worry, I haven’t over-charged you or anything. It costs £2.90 to get this far anyway.”
“Oh, OK.”
“Have a nice day.”
“Yes, you too.”
Richy and I went to a pub quiz last Thursday with Juliet, her partner and some of their young mates. It was hilariously competitive and we rubbed along with a mix of patchy knowledge, a rare flash of genius and knowing fuck all. It ended, hours later, with a music round.
“Who did Bobbie Gentry write an ode to?”
“Oooh…” said Richy and I. “Yeah! Yeah! I know! That song, you know, the one about the bridge…Yeah! Billy or something!”
LB and clothes. Well that’s been a bit of an interesting and insightful journey so far. Like his use of space (hanging out in the swing bin or sleeping on bookshelves), his choice of clothes has been unusual. Consistently unusual.
Oh dear. I suspect this is where my whimsical, cheerful little blog may get a teensy bit controversial (again). I’ll try and find a nice, fluffy photo for the end to soothe any tensions raised. So the question is; can you ask a disabled person “What have you got?” Someone I know was asked this question the other day. “EEEEK” “Shit! That’s outrageous!” “WTF??????” Were the sort of responses from other people when they heard (with a bit of swear embellishment). The question asker was an adult.
I’ve been thinking about this and am a bit undecided. Well I sort of do know what I think, but I know what I think flies in the face of a lot of thinking, conceptualising and theorising about disability.
This is a warm tale of some kind women I met in Leamington Spa. First day as a postgraduate student. I had two full days of meetings so I booked into a hotel in Leamington for a treat. Got to the station first thing, to find trains all cancelled. Typical crap rail travel. Luckily ‘Richy to the rescue’ was working at home. He picked me up, drove me to Leamington, dropped my bag at the hotel, then dropped me at the university just in time. Several hours later, I was back in Leamington Spa, looking for the hotel.
mydaftlife 
